A look at the Singapore-based company’s seven-year evolution from early to growth-stage startup
Seven years ago, a budding healthtech startup sniffed the significant business potential in digitalising Asia’s entire healthcare industry. Fast forward to 2020’s post-COVID world, and Vault Dragon’s seed vision and its bouquet of healthcare software solutions have turned into an urgent need of the hour.
The startup’s ingenious foresight and consistent innovation, buoyed by market demands in the new normal, have boosted Vault Dragon from an early-stage to a growth-stage startup. With a firm footing in five Asian countries, the digital health solutions company is all set to break ground in two more by the end of 2020. The startup plans to draw on its Series A funding round to leverage the accelerated push, as never seen before, towards a digitalised healthcare sector.
Vault Dragon’s evolution has been driven by the vision to become ‘Asia’s Google Maps for healthcare data’. The passionate and multicultural team of experts at Vault Dragon is working to build the largest digital healthcare ecosystem of its kind in the region.
Synergising Healthcare with Tech
With the belief that digital technology can improve healthcare, Tseng Ching-Tse founded the Vault Dragon in Singapore in July 2013. The young company’s first roots sprouted at the Founder Institute, one of the world’s largest pre-seed startup accelerator programs. The founding team had its eyes set on integrating Singapore’s healthcare space into a digital ecosystem that promised to make healthcare delivery smoother.
Reshaping the Health Sector
Vault Dragon’s suite of flagship software helps clinics streamline their workflow, in turn, providing efficient delivery of healthcare. The company’s key offerings are Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, Hospital Information System (HIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, and Healthcare Data Solutions. In its early years, Vault Dragon began by liberating clinics from outdated paper records and enabled them to adopt digitisation. Today, the company’s EMR system is truly regional and ready for rapid scalability. After undergoing product development last year, the upgraded version is ready to offer a seamless experience to small hospitals.
Taking the Digital Leap
The company’s intuitive applications effortlessly integrate the many tasks involved in managing a clinic. EHR enables access to a real-time, accurate and holistic view of a patient’s medical history. These software solutions not only benefit subscribing clinics but also improve clinic-patient interaction. Patients are engaged and empowered with access to the benefits of digital healthcare. Vault Dragon’s healthcare software has been stress tested by 650 healthcare providers and it effectively manages more than 1,200,000 records for over 37 hospitals and medical groups in five countries.
Early Investors
Vault Dragon’s founding business model gained the patronage of many prominent venture capital funds and investors. From Golden Equator Capital, Golden Gate Ventures, National Research Foundation and Raging Bull to the likes of Jungle Ventures and 500 Startups, their vote of confidence helped the up-and-coming startup raise close to SG$3 million in seed funding. This propped the company to uplevel from its digitisation goals towards digitalisation of the sector.
Tapping Emerging Markets
With success and growth earmarked in its home country, Vault Dragon was ready to take its pioneering healthcare software solutions to other emerging markets in the region. Although stakeholders in their target countries were not yet keen; the increasing internet penetration and rising living standards gave Ching the confidence that adopting digital healthcare was the inevitable future.
Expansion in Full Speed
Vault Dragon introduced its software to China in 2018. The company entered Indonesia and Thailand at the end of 2019 and Cambodia in 2020. Now, propelled by the pressing need for smart, synergised and contactless healthcare delivery and solutions, Vault Dragon is ready to enter Malaysia and Vietnam by the end of 2020, confident of having a bounty of satisfied paying customers in all its seven countries.
Strategy & Innovation
As 2019 dawned, Vault Dragon steadily moved away from its early digitisation business which had become less scalable in view of the company’s larger agenda. Part of the company’s realignment was bringing Shashi Bhaskar on board as COO. The IBM-veteran is charged with ensuring that the company maintains its operational and financial efficiency as it scales to more countries. With her 20-year-long management and operations experience, Shashi also oversees product development.
Living in the New Normal
The unexpected shock of COVID took the ground away from under many companies, however, it proved to be a tailwind for Vault Dragon. The company continues to witness a steady rise in revenue growth in its existing and new markets with positive projections going into 2021. This growth in a post-COVID world was reinforced by strategically shifting focus to scalable product lines and prudent operations like cost optimisation and exiting non-profitable customers.
Leveraging the Boost
Unperturbed, in fact, augmented by the new normal, Vault Dragon now aims to expand its software solutions into a full-stack outpatient EMR / HIS platform with data capabilities. The company is looking forward to raising close to SG$5 million in its Series A round of funding. The new incoming resources will be channelled towards expanding product and business capabilities that will, in turn, invite strong, sustainable and profitable growth. Vault Dragon has set its targets on making SG$4.5 million in revenue over the next 18 months.
Newer Pastures & Products
Vault Dragon also plans to utilise the new funding for setting the foundation for the company’s next trailblazing leap – building an online marketplace for medical supplies and consumables, and linking medical suppliers to the system. They plan to do this by securing the rights to distribute regionally, through the company’s connected systems across the existing base, earning a transaction fee in return.
Deep Tech is Next
In more future goals, by 2024, Vault Dragon aims to become a seasoned player in the space of digital health, fintech and big data. The company plans to apply deep tech artificial intelligence machine learning algorithms on its proprietary database. Optimising over 10 years of actual medical transactions to provide real-time predictive insights that will prove invaluable not only to their existing customers but also expand the company’s customer base by attracting new interested stakeholders including pharma and insurance companies and governments.
[Originally published by Vault Dragon in September 2020]
